Sky Blog
Delaware corporations and their advisers have been eagerly awaiting the response of the Delaware legislature to the recent surge in appraisal arbitrage and judicial pronouncements allowing this activity and suggesting that lawmakers should step in if they perceive a problem. …
A triad of recent decisions out of the Delaware Court of Chancery highlight the urgent need for legislative reform in Delaware to ameliorate the risk that appraisal arbitrage – now a multibillion dollar industry – poses to transactional vitality and …
Speed Read
In two recent rulings, the New York Supreme Court rejected settlements arising from lawsuits in which plaintiff stockholders challenged the defendant public companies’ merger-related disclosures. The court in each case found that proposed supplemental disclosures that defendants would …
Acquisition financing activity was robust in 2014, as the credit markets accommodated increased demand from rising M&A activity. At over $749 billion, global 2014 M&A loan issuance was up approximately 40 percent year over year, the highest total since before …
Stockholders’ ability to sue to protect their interests plays a critical role in corporate governance.[1] As described by the Delaware Court of Chancery: “Due to rational passivity, ‘it is likely that in a public corporation there will be less …
On December 19, 2014, the Delaware Supreme Court issued a ruling reversing an order of the Court of Chancery granting a preliminary injunction that would have enjoined an agreed-to merger and required a mandatory post-signing 30-day go-shop period. In C&J …
On December 8, 2014, the American Bankruptcy Institute (“ABI”) Commission to Study the Reform of Chapter 11 (the “Commission”) issued its Final Report and Recommendations (the “Report”). The Report proposes a number of important changes to Chapter 11.[1]
The Commission …
In In re Zhongpin Inc. Stockholders Litigation (Nov. 26, 2014), the Delaware Chancery Court found that the plaintiffs had pled sufficient facts to raise an inference that Xianfu Zhu, who was the company’s founder, Chairman and CEO, was a controlling …
Just five weeks after the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Flakeboard America had abandoned its plan to acquire a medium-density fiberboard (MDF) mill and two particleboard mills from SierraPine in the face of the Division’s …
[On November 5, 2014,] the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (the “Federal Reserve”) approved a final rule (the “Final Rule”) implementing Section 622 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the “Dodd-Frank Act”),[1] which …
In an October 14, 2014 decision[1] on a motion to dismiss, the Delaware Court of Chancery (C Bouchard) held that business judgment review applied to breach of fiduciary duty claims asserted against directors in connection with a stock-for-stock sale …
The Treasury Department and the IRS recently released Notice 2014-52 (the “Notice”), which describes regulations that the government intends to issue to target the tax benefits of corporate inversions. The provisions of the Notice are summarized in our previous client …
In the first half of 2014, master limited partnership (MLP) mergers and acquisitions (M&A) transactions represented approximately 25 percent of all US oil and gas industry M&A activity. MLP transactions in the midstream and upstream subsectors have dominated the MLP …
On September 30, 2014, the Delaware Supreme Court reversed a jury verdict finding that ev3, Inc. breached its contractual obligation to the shareholders of Appriva Medical, Inc., a company purchased by ev3. In ev3, Inc. v Lesh, No. 515m 2013…
Hedge fund activism has increased almost hyperbolically. Some view this optimistically as a means for bridging the separation of ownership and control; others are more pessimistic, seeing mainly wealth transfers from bondholders or speculative expectations of a takeover as fueling …
The following post comes to us from Minor Myers, Assistant Professor at Brooklyn Law School, and Charles Korsmo, Assistant Professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. It is based on their recent paper, “The Structure of Stockholder …
Summary
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has agreed to pay a civil penalty of $896,000 concerning its conversion of notes into voting securities of USG Corporation in December 2013, which was more than five years after Berkshire’s HSR Act filing to acquire …
A recent Delaware Supreme Court decision highlights the growing risks to companies of extensive statutory “books and records” demands that recently have become a favorite in the toolkit of plaintiffs’ lawyers and even activist shareholders conducting what are often speculative …
On July 15, 2014, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (DC Circuit) ruled that if the President, pursuant to his powers under the Exon-Florio Amendment to the Defense Production Act of 1950 (DPA), deprives a foreign …
Alongside the more typical summer fare, such as coverage of the best beach reading and the latest action movie blockbuster, this summer the media have been abuzz with seemingly daily reports on the latest so-called “inversion” transactions shifting a U.S.-based …